The COATS Files

Chapter Three- 1,782 miles

Locks' moved quickly down the back streets of the city, feeling an unusually intense fear pushing them to get on a subway and get out of the city already. Locks' found themselves forced to slow as the dark backstreet met with a more open-ended main road, and they traded the normally familiar alley like paths for the slightly crowded sidewalks.

As they shoved along with the crowd they caught sight of more than one nervous expression. A man pulled on his collar and gulped, a woman clutched her purse close to her sides, and a cop's hand was resting permanently on his guns holster- Locks' looked away and pulled up their hood as they passed the cop, hands moving to grip the straps of their backpack.

Distantly, Locks' remembered before Thife had taken over the city's underground. Locks' had always been a street kid, and they grew up in possibly some of the worst parts of the city, a dangerous place at a dangerous era. The five families were in rather wrecked states well Locks' was growing up, which is probably why it had only taken Thife two years to decimate each one, but they had still run the streets.

It used to be that if you killed a man, you sent his wife flowers, but Thife worked differently, she wasn't the same gangster New York- or even Chicago- had become morbidly familiar with. Locks' had first heard of Cookie when she made her first major move: killing one of the bosses'.

Locks' remembered how the underground spiralled from there, and they had become even more involved than before, being pulled in more and more until they went from street kid to teen mobster, assigned a gun and Cookie's back as a target.

But, when they met Cookie for the first time,  she had been younger than they expected, around Locks' age, and she didn't match up with the image Locks' had built in their head. Her hands weren't stained with blood, her form held warmth and humour, and well Locks' had doubted this detail, grief didn't drip from her eyes, but most importantly, she had spoken. Her eyes, not quite a steel shade, had latched onto Locks', past the gun in their hands that had just started to shake. When she spoke, Locks' nearly missed it. She sounded pensive, her gaze full of unclear promises, and Locks' wondered if she was the first to hear her voice in a long time. "Not yet," she had shared as if assessing, and then she turned around and moved to walk away.

Cookie had never pointed a bullet back, and Locks' still regrets pulling the trigger.

The subway jerked roughly, and Locks' snapped back to attention, their hand shooting out to grip the nearest handhold in time to avoid falling. Glancing around for an empty seat, Locks' found that the subway was overcrowded- as usual- and they would have to stand. Locks' steadied themselves and clutched the metal ring harder, suddenly very grateful that Thife had left her spare gloves at the club, and grimacing as the subway was filled with more bodies and shot forwards once again.

However, despite themselves, as Locks' stared at their hands, the clean black leather of Thife's gloves flashed back to different, ripped, beggars gloves that used to cover up to their knuckles and had clutched guns only after months of agonizing thinking. Cookie had dropped off the map, not heard of nor seen in weeks, and even though the five families were getting weaker and weaker with each passing day despite her seeming abstains, the mob was starting to think one of them had gotten a lucky bullet. What they didn't know was that Locks' had spent endless nights wondering what had happened to Cookie, not thinking the bullet to be so lucky.

When Cookie did appear again, it was nearly four months later and Locks' had changed. The foreign heavy metal in their hand had been traded for a steady gun, and they were no longer a stupid kid lost in a world of gun smoke. If they were to get information on Cookie, they couldn't have remained a bottom feeder, and with four out of five of the families destroyed, it wasn't hard to make themselves seem strong amongst the chaos. And when one acts strong, one becomes strong, even if the guilt of killing someone had been eating them from the inside out like a kind of deadly acid.